On 26 November 2020 at 6 pm CET (12 pm US EST, 5 pm GMT), the digital platform webcast.irisceramicagroup.com will host the 15th event in The Architects Series, presented by The Planmagazine for the Iris Ceramica Group. The latest new episode takes viewers behind the scenes at Zaha Hadid Architects, the studio founded by the late Anglo-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, who became the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Prize for Architecture in 2004 and died prematurely on 31 March 2016. The docufilm illustrates the studio’s working methods and current projects, and will introduce the lecture “Cyberspace and the autopoiesis of architecture”, to be held via live streaming by architect Patrik Schumacher, Zaha Hadid’s successor and principal in the studio. 

Founded in London forty years ago, Zaha Hadid Architects rose to international prominence with a series of cutting-edge projects of sculptural beauty. Buildings that people loved and hated, in which form and space are intertwined, buildings that establish a relationship with their context that may be controversial but, as the studio itself claims, “combine an unwavering optimism for the future with concepts of connectivity and integration” and redraw the skyline with prominent new urban landmarks. 

These are fluid constructions inspired by the principles of nature but regulated by sophisticated parametric design technologies. Zaha Hadid Architects has made its unique modus operandi an important standard in application of the B.I.M. or Building Information Modelling method, coming up with a new architectural avant-garde movement nicknamed "parametricism" by architect Patrik Schumacher, who explains the theory in his two volumes on "The Autopoiesis of Architecture" published in 2011 and 2012. With almost a thousand projects designed on six continents, 60 of which are currently under construction, and a staff of more than 400 professionals from 55 different countries, Zaha Hadid Architects is definitely one of the world’s most prominent architectural studios today. 

It has won numerous prizes over the past 40 years, with prestigious awards presented to architect Zaha Hadid, from the 2004 Pritzker Prize, considered the Nobel prize of architecture, to the 2016 RIBA Royal Gold Medal, as well as numerous awards for the studio’s projects. The most recent of these include, on 20 November 2020, the London Design Awardpresented to the Meixihu International Culture & Arts Centre in Changsha, the biggest and most complete cultural centre in the Chinese province of Hunan, and the Forest Green Rovers Eco Park Stadium, the world’s first zero-impact stadium with a structure primarily made out of wood. In the past few months awards have also been presented to the ME Dubai hotel in The Opus, an unusually shaped skyscraper with an empty cube in the middle which the studio designed in 2007; the Morpheus Hotel in Macao, the Leeza SOHO skyscraper, and Daxing International Airport in Beijing. (Agnese Bifulco)

To attend “The Architects Series – A documentary on: Zaha Hadid Architects”, register in advance at: https://webcast.irisceramicagroup.com/mod/page/view.php?id=155 (Participating architects qualify for 2 professional development credits.) WEBINAR: Thursday, November 26, 2020 6 p.m. / Welcome address and documentary screening: “The Architects Series – A documentary on: Zaha Hadid Architects” 6:30 p.m. / Conference: “Cyber Space and the Autopoiesis of Architecture” with Patrik Schumacher, Principal of Zaha Hadid Architects Images courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects